Medical (e.g. radiological) images are important building blocks for clinical support, teaching and research. In digital environments such as PACS, images may be manipulated and cross-referenced in a powerful and interactive fashion. As more hospitals adopt PACS, a scalable repository of case-based files will become a valuable tool for on-demand learning and exchange of data. However, a solution does not yet exist to interface such a repository with a clinical PACS. MIRC, which was developed in 2001 under the leadership of RSNA, is a standardized platform for exchanging image data.
No vendor of PACS systems presently provides a solution for creation of medical teaching files as a commercial option. Many teaching hospitals and universities have designed in-house solutions using a variety of formats. Recently, the RSNA has defined standards for MRIC. MIRC has the potential to be a worldwide set of standards defining teaching file and research data sets in the same fashion as DICOM has become the de facto standard for PACS.
Systems that can retrieve medical images and other information from PACS to compose radiological teaching files in a teaching file library, and share with other teaching file libraries using the MIRC protocols are not yet available.
It is therefore the principal object of this present invention to provide a method and apparatus for creating teaching files from medical image archives.